Friday, 20 April 2018

KHAYIM SLOVES (HENRI SLOVÈS)

KHAYIM
SLOVES (HENRI SLOVÈS) (June 19, 1905-1988)

He was born in Bialystok, Russian
Poland, to a father who was a leather worker and who later took up
business.He studied in a “cheder
metukan” (improved religious elementary school), in a Russian and a German
school, and later in a secular Jewish public school; he also attended
pedagogical courses in Bialystok.He was
in addition a student in the Warsaw “Free High School.”From his earliest childhood years, he had an
interest in theater, would organize pageants with groups of children in the
courtyard of their residence, and would put together theatrical evenings with
pupils from the Jewish public school, for which he served as director and lead
actor, and the repertoire consisted largely of plays that he put together on
his own.His first works for the stage
were a dramatized chapter from Mendele’s Fishke
der krumer (Fishke the lame), later his own drama in one and one-half acts
and a four-act play in blank verse—A
shvere operatsye (A difficult operation), which was directed by Dovid
Herman.He was a cofounder of a theater
society, “Association of Young Lovers of the Arts” in Bialystok.In 1920 he marched on foot with the
retreating Red Army from Poland to Russia, was in Minsk, Smolensk, and Moscow,
later returned to Poland, was active in the underground revolutionary work of
the left, spent time in Polish prisons, and endured hunger strikes.He subsequently continued his studies in the
Jewish pedagogical courses and was later a teacher in Jewish public
schools.In 1926 he immigrated to
France, settled in Paris, studied (1927-1929) at the Lyceum “Charlemagne” there,
and went on to study (1929-1934) at the Sorbonne where he received his doctor
of law degree.Over the years 1935-1938,
he published three books in French concerning international law and modern
history.In 1936 he was secretary of the
organizing committee of the first World Jewish Culture Congress in Paris, and
as the secretary of the then founded IKUF (Jewish Cultural Association), he
visited the Baltic states (autumn 1938) and Belgium, Holland, and England
(spring 1939).Under Nazi rule in France
(1940-1944), he lived for a time in Vichy, later near Lyons, where he was active
in the French-Jewish resistance movement and wrote articles for illegal Yiddish
and French publications.After the
liberation of France, he returned to Paris, was a contributor to French
periodicals, and published plays and articles concerned with various Jewish
cultural issues in: Naye prese (New
press), Oyfsnay (Afresh), and Unzer eynikeyt (Our unity), among
others, in Paris; Yidishe kultur
(Jewish culture), Morgn-frayhayt
(Morning freedom), and Zamlungen
(Collections)—in New York; and Yidishe
shriftn (Yiddish writings) and Folks-shtime
(Voice of the people) in Warsaw.He also
contributed to Yiddish publications in Latin America and in the state of
Israel.Among his drama and folk plays, Homens mapole (Hamen’s downfall), Di yoynes un der valfish (The Jonahs and
the whale), Di tsayt fun gezang (The
time of song), Nekome-nemer
(Avengers), and Borekh fun amsterdam
(Baruch from Amsterdam) were staged in Yiddish theaters in France, Sweden,
Poland, Romania, Israel, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and New
York.His one-act play Der ksav fun rekht af links (Writing
from right to left) was performed in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.In 1958 he and the Parisian writers M. Vilner
and A. Yudin visited Moscow with the mission there of “investigating the state
of Jewish culture,” and their report, “Vegn der yidisher kultur in
sovetn-farband” (On Jewish culture in the Soviet Union)—published in 1959 in Yidishe kultur in New York and Unzer eynikeyt in Paris and republished
by the World Jewish Congress in Paris—elicited a discussion in Unzer eynikeyt (August-September 1959),
as well as various polemical commentaries in the Yiddish and Hebrew press.Together with Sh. Dobzhinski, he also
published and edited (1958) a quarterly journal in French entitled Domaine yidich (The field of Yiddish)
with the goal of acquainted the assimilated Jewish youth in France with
writings in Yiddish, Yiddish literature, and Yiddish culture.In book form: Nekome-nemer, a tragedy in three acts and nine scenes (Paris:
Oyfsnay, 1947), 94 pp. (winner of a prize from the Moshe Kasner Fund in Buenos
Aires); Homens mapole, a folk play in
four acts (Paris: Oyfsnay, 1949), 103 pp.; Di
yoynes un di valfish, a folk play in three acts (Paris: Oyfsnay, 1952), 117
pp. (also winner of a prize from the Moshe Kasner Fund); Borekh fun Amsterdam, a drama in four acts and nine scenes (New
York: IKUF, 1956), 112 pp., second edition with text in Yiddish and Polish, in
three acts (Warsaw: Yiddish State Theater, 1961); Der ksav fun rekht af links, in Yidish
kultur (New York) 3 (1954); Di milkhome
fun got (The war of God), a drama in three acts (New York: IKUF, 1963), 107
pp.; Tsen brider zaynen mir gevezn, drame
in dray aktn (We were ten brothers, a drama in three acts) (Paris: Oyfsnay,
1965), 133 pp., earlier published in Yidishe
kultur; Sovetishe yidishe
melukhishkeyt (Soviet Yiddish nationalism) (Paris, 1979), 265 pp., Hebrew
translation as Mamlakhtiyut yehudit beverit
hamoatsot (Tel Aviv: Am oved, 1981), 223 pp.; A shlikhes keyn moskve (Messenger to Moscow) (New York, 1985), 302
pp.His work also appeared in: Itshe
Goldberg, ed., Undzer dramaturgye,
leyenbukh in der yidisher drame (Our playwriting, textbook in Yiddish
drama) (New York: IKUF, 1961), pp. 501-512.In 1960 he received the Shatsov Prize from IKUF and in 1963 the
Zhitlovsky Prize—both in New York.He
visited the United States in 1962 and appeared at various IKUF
undertakings.He died in Paris.